


Forcible Renovations

by Phrenotobe_Archive



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Comedy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe_Archive/pseuds/Phrenotobe_Archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saturday night in Brooklyn, 1935: A young woman trips and falls on a stair; an inconspicuous mishap ending in death. No post-mortem, no dependants, one close friend to identify the body, and a small private service among family and a few, select others. An open and shut case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forcible Renovations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nutriciousKibble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutriciousKibble/gifts).



Saturday night in Brooklyn, 1935: A young woman trips and falls on a stair; an inconspicuous mishap ending in death. No post-mortem, no dependants, one close friend to identify the body, and a small private service among family and a few, select others. An open and shut case.

“There you have it, Miss...”  
“Just Calliope,” she says, tilting her head away from the direct gaze, “Like the music.”  
Detective Crocker clears her throat with official haughtiness, drawing herself up to her full height as she stands up in her seat. (It isn’t much).  
“Miss Calliope,” she says firmly, “There is nothing here to investigate. There is less here to find than a-” she pauses to pick the right word, “Less to find than the change in a bacterium’s rear pocket!”  
She slams both hands on the table for effect, and grimaces through the sting of her palms.  
This case is _closed_.”

Calliope unfolds from her own chair wearily, an angular being with coathanger shoulders and a ridge that extends down her spine and under the collar of her suit.  
“It wasn’t an accident,” she says, softly, “She was pushed.”  
“No evidence,” Jane says, still standing, “No suspects. No charges.”  
Calliope lays her own hands on the table, two large sets of knobbled fingers and angular claws that curl into and scratch the wood, thick and strong and dangerous.  
“Please,” she says, “I do actually have a suspect. I know you think this might be some kind of cruel ploy by me upon some unknown and innocent entity on who I am placing blame, but...”  
She lowers her voice and leans in close, nose to truncated sensor pit with Jane, and breathes a quiet, sad sigh.  
“I do believe that there was a highblooded troll involved in this absolutely upsetting calamity.”  
Jane matches her eye-to-eye for a long moment, the cigar in the ashtray burning down to a stump.  
“Hit me with your best shot, buster,” she manages, her voice barely wavering, “Or you’re out of the door.”  
Calliope nods, turning her head to look at the frosted-glass door. Jane’s puffed up stance sags for just a moment of rest, but she picks right back up again when the alien’s focus is back.  
“It’s a Serket.”  
Jane bristles visibly, curling her hand up into a fist.  
“Listen here,” she says, slamming her fist on the table for emphasis, “I know the two of you were galivanting around town like a pair of odd peas having a gay old time, but I can’t erase the past.”  
Calliope draws her hands up to her chest, limp at the wrist and folded in protectively.  
“Miss Crocker, I did not mean to cause offense,” she says, timid.  
“I miss my friend too, you know,” Jane retorts hotly, “If you’re saying that the police force are not doing their best, well, I-” she stutters, “I am sure they are not, but I am not at liberty to discuss it!”  
Calliope nods gingerly, her giant hands slowly lowering again.  
“Have you ever thought,” she says carefully, “about going rogue?”

TT: Hello?  
GG: Mr. Strider, I have a giant problem on my hands!  
TT: What’s the sitch, Jane?  
GG: Well, today I was minding my own business when Roxy’s old flame showed up at my office.  
GG: Wouldn’t leave until I heard her out, and said she had new information.  
TT: And?  
GG: Well, she was in quite a pickle.  
GG: Said her brother was coming to kill her.  
GG: So now she’s all tucked up at my house.   
TT: Oh.  
GG: Oh?   
TT: So, literally a giant who is a problem.   
TT: I see.   
GG: What do I do?  
TT: Not my particular area of expertise, Jane.   
TT: I mainly do cars.  
TT: Speaking of which, could you do me a favour and clear the line?  
GG: Oh dear, I’m sorry.  
TT: I’ll make it up to you later, but this is the garage’s only phone line.  
GG: Then I’d best be off I suppose...   
TT: Let me know how it goes, and keep your chin up, Jane.

 

Jane rolls her eyes up to meet Calliope’s anxiously excited gaze.  
“I’m afraid there’s no good news here,” she says, “We’re plumb out of luck as far as usable allies are concerned.”  
Calliope pulls a face - probably a pout, though it’s a little hard to tell with the layout of her face.  
“We could always just go there I suppose,” she offers, “It may be a little hard to get into it, but I’m sure I can give you a boost up!”  
Jane replaces the handset with a grimace.  
“Oh I’m sure the biggest gangster family would take to that quite kindly. What are we supposed to do, just waltz up there donning a fake moustache apiece and knock on their door?”

GG: Testing, one, two...  
GG: Well this recording machine seems in order.  
UU: what?  
GG: This is the last will and testament of Jane Crocker.  
UU: what is that?  
GG: Hush, this is important.  
GG: I, Jane Crocker, being of sound mind and body-  
UU: what on earth are yoU doing, jane?   
GG: Of _sound_ mind and body, as witnessed by Calliope-  
UU: i beg yoUr pardon, are yoU doing something important?  
GG: Say ‘I am Calliope’.  
UU: yes i am, bUt time really is an issUe here, miss crocker...  
GG: Just say it.  
UU: say what precisely?  
GG: Your name! SAY IT!  
UU: :U  
UU: my name is calliope.  
GG: Thank you.  
UU: do yoU mind if I borrow this?  
GG: Well, what are you going to do with it?  
UU: i will keep it protected and safe from harm. ^u^   
GG: Hey!  
GG: Give it back you giant green heathen!  
GG: You’ll break it!  
UU: it is perfectly safe in my pocket. u_u  
GG: You have made an enemy today, my good woman.

 

The Serket’s mansion, paid for with dirty money, was a short bus ride from the centre of town. Grand and elaborate, there are two wings off the central house, an elaborate treehouse in the garden, and what appears to be a pirate ship moored in the dock behind the house.  
Putting a hand up to check the fit of her false moustache, Jane squares her shoulders and knocks on the door.  
They’re greeted by a troll of considerable assets, most of which are merely money. Dressed in a dark blue gown cut to show a surprising amount of quite attractive leg, she’s longhaired with a hard stare.  
She squints at Jane like she’s trying to figure her out.  
“What?” she says bluntly.  
“Is this the Serket residence?”  
The woman frowns, checking the dark polish on her nails before answering, leaving Jane and Calliope awkwardly standing around on the step.  
“Well you walked past the sign, didn’t you?” she says after a long minute.  
Jane looks at Calliope.  
“Psst,” she says, beckoning with a finger.  
Calliope obediently bends to listen.  
_“Is this the right one?”_ she whispers into the hollow indent of Calliope’s ear.  
Calliope gives the troll a measuring glance while she taps her foot impatiently.  
_”I don’t think so,”_ she returns in a stage whisper.  
“I’m right here,” the troll points out, “What do you want? I could walk away eight seconds from now!”  
“Do you have a sister?” Calliope inquires, her voice calm and quiet for her size.  
The troll wrinkles her nose.  
“Uch, Trolls don’t do weird family things, okay? But I guess my ancestor has more than one descendant. Do you really want to hang out with that nerd? I didn’t even know she had any friends!”  
Jane nods, looking up at Calliope for reassurance.  
“That’s the girl we’re looking for, yes.”  
“Your loss,” the troll girl says, reaching for a pair of glasses on the hall table as she lets them in. Putting them on, her hard expression falls away, leaving a girl who is quite pleasing in the face, with an easy smile and a pair of attractive long fangs jutting from her upper set of teeth.  
She grabs for a long coat and throws it over her shoulders for warmth.  
The coat is nautically themed, as is most of the rest of the house, with a long rope dangling down from somewhere up on high to rest just above the floor in the central core of three sets of spiral staircases stacked together.  
“She’s up in the observatory, probably. I’m Vriska.”  
“Nice to meet you, Vriska,” Jane says on a reflex, “I’m Jane Cr-”  
“Cur?”  
“Cur...umpet. I’m a private... house inspector.”  
Jane smiles, crossing her fingers for luck behind her back.  
“Right,” Vriska says, unimpressed, “And your friend?”  
Calliope looks confused for a moment before inspiration strikes.  
“Oh!” she says, breaking into a smile, “I do forcible renovations.”  
“Whatever,” Vriska says, “Sounds cool, you should tell me about it later.”  
She leads the two intrepid investigators upstairs, telling them about certain portraits on the way. There are a lot of different kinds, some scored into with crosses, (Mom’s had a lot of exes, I dunno, she keeps switching around the people she says she hated the most) and others deliberately turned over to face the other way. 

The observatory door is painted midnight blue, stars and constellations marked on it in silver. Pushing it open with a hand, Vriska points with a thumb to a high-backed chair near to the centre of the room.  
“Here you go,” she says drily, “The mastermind, Aranea Serket.”  
The chair turns around slowly, a figure with bobbed hair and the same asymmetrical horns as Vriska sitting in it with a white furry creature in her lap.  
“Thank you, Vriska. That’s quite a compliment.”  
Vriska pulls a bored sneer and leans against the doorjamb.

“You are Calliope, I assume?” she says, petting the creature in her lap as she talks, “I’ve been waiting for you.”  
“Yes, I am,” she says, taking a few steps into the room and uncurling to her full height.  
“You’re taller than I expected,” Aranea says, tilting her chin up to take in the view.  
“Please don’t banter with me,” Calliope says, her hands lifting to clasp together at her chest protectively, “I just need an answer to some questions that have been preying on my mind.”  
Aranea nods, her catseye lenses flashing to obscure her eyes for a moment.  
“Of course,” she says soothingly, as the purrbeast in her lap stretches for a moment, curling up again to get comfortable, “What do you need to know?”  
Calliope takes a hesitant step forward, her arms swinging open to gesture as she begins to talk.  
“Well, last year,” she says, “I was in a relationship with a wonderful girl named Roxy. However, it is my belief that you pushed her off-balance down a flight of stairs, or otherwise caused her to fall. Could you tell me, what had she ever done to you?”  
Aranea tickles the purrbeast’s ears as she considers the question.  
“Well,” she says, “I suppose she was in my way.”  
Calliope’s face draws sad and downturned.  
“So you are indeed the person behind her death?”  
“I suppose so.”  
Calliope turns toward Jane at the door, an expression of defeat in the slump of her back. Jane, trying to make her fake moustache stick back onto her upper lip, notices belatedly and gives her a determined and affirming nod.  
“Then I suppose now we know the circumstances of it all, I should really introduce myself properly,” Calliope says, taking another step towards Aranea, her claws clicking on the tile.  
“I am Calliope, and you murdered the person most dear to me in the world. I do forcible renovations, and I will have my vengeance.”  
Jane pulls the door closed.  
“I think we should perhaps make ourselves scarce, don’t you?” she says brightly.


End file.
